When comparing Elephant vs Ulysses III, the Slant community recommends Ulysses III for most people. In the question“What are the best Evernote alternatives?”Ulysses III is ranked 14th while Elephant is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Ulysses III is:

Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.

Pros

Pro

Only the essentials

Only basic features are added to Elephant so users aren't overloaded with the interface.

Pro

Files are stored locally

Instead of moving files over the cloud, files are stored locally for extra privacy. For syncing, any cloud service can be used.

Pro

Open source

All features can be used or edited at will for free.

Pro

Markdown supported

This can be useful when formatting files in HTML.

Pro

Files can be uploaded by drag'n'drop

Pro

Highly compatible

Elephant is compatible with Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.

Pro

Active development

The developer has replied, and added many features which users have suggested in the comments on the website.

Pro

Does not distract the user

Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.

Pro

Great tools for organizing and finding files

Ulysses saves everything in the app so there's no file management outside of the editor involved. It organizes content in groups (folders) and sheets (files), has a powerful, easy to use search and allows adding keywords to attachments to help them be organized and found quickly.

Groups can have an unlimited amount of subgroups and the title of subgroup shows up in the pane view. Sheets can be split up, merged, glued together and easily moved around in the sheet pane by dragging and dropping. Great for splitting up larger documents into manageable chunks while still keeping an overview of the whole project and having the ability to move sections around quickly.

Contents of a group can be filtered by text, keywords or change date within headings, code blocks, images or any other marked up text. Filters can contain a combination of conditions and be saved to make a new group. Saved filters can be moved around to different groups and will return filtered results for that group. Selecting multiple groups will show the combined sheets of those groups.

Pro

Highly customizable

A few themes are baked in and a big selection of user-contributed styles to choose from are available on the Ulysses Style Exchange.

Pro

Comprehensive documentation

Ulysses comes with an excellently written documentation that covers everything there is to know about the software, including an extensive list of keyboard shortcuts as well as short and sweet introduction to Markdown and its benefits.

Pro

Syncs via iCloud

Content can be synchronised across devices via Apple's iCloud.

Pro

Displays statistics including how long it takes to read the document

The editor tracks statistics that shows how many characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages a document contains and estimated reading time for slow, average, and fast readers. The statistics display in a popover that can be torn-off so it's constantly visible.

Pro

No Markdown syntax knowledge required

Markdown formatting can be applied from the right-click menu, with keyboard shortcuts or from an optional markup bar. Necessary elemants to links, images, and footnotes are added by filling in a popover.

Pro

Helps get stuff done

Goals such as how many characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, lines or pages should be written can be set to help get motivated.

Pro

Powerful organization features

Groups, tagging, and notes for each document.

Pro

Multiple preview and export options

The editor can export to Plain Text, RTF, Word, HTML, ePub and PDF with customizable styles for each option. It can also preview HTML directly in the browser.

A demo version is available

Pro

Inline formatting

Pro

Includes features for not losing place

Ulysses has options for highlighting current line, showing line numbers and enabling typewriter mode. Typewriter mode defines a place on the screen where the cursor should be so eyes are kept focusing in one place on the screen.

Pro

Keyboard navigation

You can operate Ulysses via keyboard only. No need for mouse.

Cons

Con

No mobile app

No mobile apps (can use common sync tools to edit plain files, though).

Con

Light on features

While not labeled a beta, Elephant is a new note program and doesn't offer all the bells and whistles.

Con

No WYSIWYG editor

Con

Overwrites imported markdown files

When previously written markdown files are imported, they're converted to Ulysses' version of Markdown and original files are overwritten.

Con

Cannot render code blocks

You can go around this limitation, but it is complex and not so pretty looking as it is in other Markdown Editors.

Con

Automatic switching of sheets can be confusing

Scrolling down when at the bottom of a sheet will switch to next sheet. When unexpected, this behavior can be confusing to some.

Con

iOS and Mac versions have to be bought separately

The iOS version costs $24.99 and the macOS version costs $44.99. They have to be bought separately in order to be used on those devices.

Con

Proprietary Markdown extensions but no MultiMarkdown

Con

Lacks a LaTeX-exporter

Con

No proper right-to-left support in PDF

Ulysses lacks right-to-left support that was available in the previous incarnation of this software.

Con

Cursor rendering issues

Con

Proprietary file format

Text is saved in a database in proprietary format. Meaning, your notes can't be accessed other than through the app, and cannot be moved other than by exporting them.